


Crossed Wires

by involuntaryorange



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Crack, Fluff, Humor, Inception Bingo, M/M, a.k.a. "The IO Experience"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-21
Updated: 2017-07-21
Packaged: 2018-12-04 20:26:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11562720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/involuntaryorange/pseuds/involuntaryorange
Summary: Arthur really needs to pay more attention when he's texting. Eames really needs to be more cautious about hotel bed-linens.Written for the "Misunderstood" square on my Inception Bingo card.





	Crossed Wires

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks once again to kedgeree11 for her mad beta skillz!

When Arthur gets back to his hotel room, he notices that something is wrong almost immediately.

_Almost_ immediately, because his head is swimming from 18 straight hours of research. So it’s not until he’s opened the door a few inches that he notices the slight breeze on his face, and in the slice of light from the hallway he catches a glimpse of a billowing curtain.

A curtain on the patio door that he most definitely left closed and locked when he left his room 18 hours ago.

Before the door can swing another inch inward Arthur has his gun out and cocked. He sidles into the room, gropes for the light switch, and prepares himself for whatever is lurking in wait.

He isn’t prepared.

“Eames. Why are you naked in my hotel room.”

The man in question looks disoriented, squinting at the sudden brightness of the lights. It’s possible that he was just asleep, sprawled out on top of the duvet. He shades his eyes with one hand and makes no move to cover himself. “Arthur? Why are you pointing a gun at me?” He’s disconcertingly calm for a man who a) has a gun trained on him, b) is naked in another man’s hotel room, and c) is allowing said naked body to come into direct contact with the hotel coverlet.

Arthur uncocks the gun and adjusts his aim to the headboard. “ _Why_ ,” he repeats, “are you _naked_ in my _hotel room_?”

“Would you put that thing away?” Eames asks, gesturing toward the firearm with his chin.

Arthur flaps his supporting hand at Eames. “ _You_ put _that_ thing away!”

Eames sighs and grabs the side of the duvet that he isn’t lying on, flipping it over to cover his lap. “There, better?”

Arthur rolls his eyes and flips the safety on, then takes a quick step to the side to deposit the gun on the desk.

Eames smacks his lips. “I’m parched, darling, could you bring me a glass of water? I’d get it myself, only, well.” He looks meaningfully down at his body.

“I’m not getting you anything until you tell me _why you’re here_.”

Eames makes a face like _Arthur_ is the one who’s lost his mind and shown up naked in another man’s hotel room and allowed a blanket of unknown but probably horrifying provenance to touch his genitals. “You asked me to come here!”

“What? _When_?”

“When you sexted me!”

“I didn’t— what are you even _talking_ about?” Arthur reaches into his pocket to feel the weight of his die. “I can guarantee you that I didn’t _sext_ you.”

“You absolutely did. Yesterday.”

“I think I’d _remember_ sexting you.” Arthur pauses. “If that was something I’d even do in the first place. Which I wouldn’t,” he clarifies.

Eames smirks, like he doesn’t believe Arthur, because Eames is nothing if not a smug asshole. “You must’ve been pissed. Arthur, sozzled sexting, who’d’ve thought it.”

Arthur lets go of his die and extracts his phone from his pocket. “You _know_ I don’t drink on the job.” He opens up his text messages and starts to scroll. “Look, I’ll prove it to you. There’s absolutely nothing here that could even be _remotely_ interpreted as—” Arthur squints at his phone in confusion. “‘ _I have a boner to lick with you_ ’?”

“See?” Eames raises his eyebrows triumphantly, as though the matter has been settled.

“Why would I— that doesn’t even— _Obviously_ I was trying to write ‘I have a bone to pick with you’! Because you vouched for Munyiga and he’s an idiot!” Arthur waves the phone at Eames frantically. “A bone to pick! Not a boner to lick!”

“That’s not what it says,” Eames says, primly.

“A _boner_ to _lick_? Does that _really_ sound like something I would say?”

“Your phone’s predictive text would seem to think so. Why would it be so certain that you meant to write ‘boner,’ hmm?”

“What does it even _mean_? A boner to lick _with_ you? Are we both licking the boner simultaneously?”

“Well, you _are_ rather flexible, darling.”

“I’m not _that_ flexible, I can’t— I mean, I haven’t— not since I quit yog— oh, fuck you, stop _grinning_. You know I didn’t mean to write that.”

Eames doesn’t stop grinning. If anything, his grin grows even wider.

“Wait,” Arthur says. “Weren’t you in Montenegro?”

Eames raises an eyebrow. “You just _happen_ to know where I was?”

“I always know where you are. Where _everyone_ is,” Arthur corrects. “Anyway, you’re trying to change the subject. Did you seriously fly all the way from Montenegro to Vancouver because you thought I sexted you?”

“Whether or not the _intention_ to sext was there, I think we can agree that the resulting message _was_ a sext.”

“Okay, first of all, can we please stop saying ‘sext’? And second of all, did you or did you not fly 15 hours to see me because you thought I wanted to have sex with you?”

Eames occupies himself with a loose thread on the duvet. “There were stops in Belgrade and Munich, so…” He clears his throat. “Technically it was closer to 20 hours.”

Arthur does some quick mental math. “And then you, what, came straight here and broke into my hotel room? I’m assuming you booked the room next door and jumped balconies?”

“Erm. Yes.” Eames squirms a bit under the blanket. “Well, I’m a few rooms down.” He scratches his nose. “And perhaps a couple of floors up.” He clears his throat again. “Three floors up. And five rooms across.”

Arthur takes a moment to observe. After all, that’s what he does: he gathers all the available information and makes decisions based on what he’s learned. And right now he’s observing that Eames is… he’s _embarrassed_ , is what he is. Somehow Eames looks more exposed now than he did when Arthur first flipped on the light and discovered him in all his naked glory. It’s bizarre, seeing underneath his normally glib shell, and Arthur abruptly feels guilty. He was so busy loudly denying that he was interested in Eames that he totally missed what was essentially, by Eames’s absurd standards, a declaration of feelings. It’s suddenly painfully obvious: true to his pickpocketing roots, Eames’s cocksure attitude wasn’t mockery — it was misdirection.

And it had almost worked. Would have worked on someone who hadn’t spent so much time watching Eames, studying him, figuring out how he worked and how not to be stolen from.

This is what Arthur does: he observes, and then he decides.

“Okay,” he says, taking off his jacket.

Eames looks up at him for the first time in several minutes, alarmed and confused. “Okay?”

Arthur shrugs as he loosens his tie. “Nobody’s ever flown 20 hours because they wanted to fuck me.”

Eames frowns, though his eyes follow Arthur’s hands as they move to unbutton his shirt. “I don’t— that is to say, you shouldn’t—”

“And I want to,” Arthur confesses, quietly. If Eames is brave enough to venture across the rickety bridge connecting them — the bridge they’ve been ignoring for years with eyerolls and sarcasm and a veritable cornucopia of other defense mechanisms — the least Arthur can do is meet him partway.

Eames’s eyes dart back up to Arthur’s face. “Really?”

“I mean, I texted you about my boner.” Arthur tosses his shirt over the desk chair and starts on his belt, stalking over to the bed.

“Accidentally,” Eames says, as Arthur peels the duvet away from him. Eames helpfully lifts his hips so Arthur can yank the offending blanket off the bed altogether.

“Let’s be real,” Arthur says, kneeling on the bed. “I probably should’ve noticed that I wrote ‘boner.’”

“You probably should’ve,” Eames concedes, a hint of his previous grin returning to his lips, one of his hands resting warm on Arthur’s thigh.

“So, y’know, I guess I _did_ sext you.” Arthur leans in to taste Eames’s growing smile.

He pauses when their mouths are an inch or so apart, relishing Eames’s small sigh of frustration. “But we’re using condoms, because you probably just got chlamydia from that fucking blanket.”


End file.
